Discovering Us (3 page)

“So what have you been up to?”

Hm. What had I been up to? I wondered if I could, in one concise paragraph, tell him all that’d happened in the past five years.

“In the past five years or lately?” I asked, spooning some ice cream into my mouth.

He chuckled. “Let’s start with lately and work our way back.”

I twisted my lips to the side, thinking of all that’d been going on lately. “Rebecca and I barely made it out alive in Chem I the other day because Zach Darren thought it’d be fun to point a test tube at us that had potassium chlorate in it after he’d dropped in a gummy bear.”

He raised an eyebrow as he looked over at me. “Don’t those pretty much shoot out fire?”

“Yeah. So I didn’t feel bad at all when I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and sprayed that foam stuff all over him.”

He laughed, shaking his head.

“Oh, and Rebecca and I also got tickets to see Three Days Grace…”

Looking impressed, he commented, “Yeah? How’d you manage that?”

“We heard that Bobby Winfield had a couple tickets but he was selling them for, like, three hundred dollars each. We didn’t have that much money, so we made a drug deal with him.”

He choked on his drink then narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously.

“Calm down. We told him we could score him some coke for the tickets because Rebecca’s dad’s a cop and she could steal some from the evidence room. So we mixed baking soda with some of Rebecca’s little brother’s crushed up Ritalin pills and traded him.”

The corner of Jag’s mouth twitched as he shook his head again. “You two are bad.”

“Hey, the next weekend after the concert, he told us it was the ‘best shit,’” I did air quotes here, “he’d ever had.”

He took a bite of his ice cream, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked at me. “Anything else?”

“Well,” I drew that word out into at least three syllables wondering if I really should tell him more of the stuff we’d been up to. Man, people were just dumb to ever mess with us, I realized with a snicker. Taking a deep breath, I informed him of Rebecca’s and my chicanery. “When Sissy Jacobs stole Rebecca’s boyfriend, Andy, at the first of the year, we filled her locker with tampons, so when Andy walked with her after class, and she opened it, they all spilled out which embarrassed the hell out of her. Um, we taped an air horn to the bottom of Coach Miller’s chair on a test day, so when he sat down, it went off. He fell out of his chair and was laughing so hard, he called off the test.” I twisted my mouth again and rolled my eyes to the ceiling thinking of other things we’d done. “Oh! When Brian Jones called me a bitch last semester because I wouldn’t go out with him, we had some friends keep him busy before history class—which Coach Hendricks teaches and he doesn’t give a crap about anything but football, so we knew we’d get away with it—anyway, we put plastic wrap across the door with superglue all over it about forehead level, and Brian walked right into it.”

Jag snorted. “Wondered why he shaved his head.”

I laughed. “He called me a lot worse names than bitch after that. But it was worth it.”

“Damn, El. You two are devious,” he said. “That it?”

I thought for a few seconds. “Uh, the secretary wouldn’t let Rebecca call home when she felt sick a couple weeks ago, so we wrapped her phone in duct tape after school. And when Candice Yates got her new car a month ago, she gave everyone a ride to the track but Rebecca and me, so we Saran Wrapped it to a light pole in the parking lot so she couldn’t get into it the next day.”

Wow. Guess Rebecca and I’d really made some headway since our days of scheming to short-sheet beds or play Fifty-Two Card Pickup.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” he said smiling crookedly at me, which nearly stopped my breath.

I stared at him a couple seconds before realizing he’d spoken.

Oh. Yeah. Conversation, El. Have one. You know, that thing where you open your mouth and use your vocal cords to create sounds, which are actually things called words. People use these to communicate. It’s cool. Try it.

“I hadn’t thought about it before, but I guess we really are pretty ruthless.” I looked at him in surprise at my confession, which made him smile even more crookedly.

Be. Still. My. Heart.

“Who were all those guys hanging around you in the parking lot today?” he then asked between spoonfuls of his float.

I shrugged. “Just mostly guys who got out of practice, I guess. I mean, some of them are in track, but I think some of them are golfers too,” I said, then took a drink.

He was looking at me when I put my glass down, his eyes turning a dark navy. I frowned wondering what was wrong. He reached his hand out toward my face and I slowly backed my head away as his hand slowly kept inching forward. I would’ve laughed at any other time, but since I hadn’t talked to him in ages and had no clue what he was doing, I was wary. I finally stopped moving back still frowning at him, curiously wondering what the hell was going on. When I finally sat still long enough, his fingers cupped my chin and he stroked his thumb across the top of my lip then he pulled his hand away, stuck the pad of his thumb into his mouth and sucked on it. My eyes got huge at this wildly erotic gesture. I realized I must’ve had foam above my lip and he’d wiped it away then licked it. Whoa.

I stared at him for a second, the heated look in his eyes throwing me way off balance since I was new at this seduction stuff or whatever it was. Good grief, I had no idea what was happening to my body right then, but I remember thinking he could do that any time he wanted if it made me feel that way. Holy smokes.

I must’ve looked like the big idiot virgin I was right then too, all uptight and astonished, but not because Jag made me feel that way. He just gave me his sexy half smirk then carried on, spooning a big chunk of ice cream into his mouth, his dark eyes still on mine, while I sat there all heated and flustered and panting. 

Try getting back into normal conversation after an incident like that.

But we did, well, I finally did after my pulse rate dropped from eight billion beats per second, and it was nice to be starting our friendship back up again. It’d felt as if I’d had a hole inside for all those years and I now found that Jag was just the thing to patch it up.

When he dropped me off at home, for a reason I didn’t question, he volunteered to pick me up every day for school and take me home after his baseball practice and my track practice. I know I could’ve driven my own car, but I was no fool. Spending time with Jag was the best thing I had going and I didn’t want to blow it.

A couple weeks after our friendship had started up again, he came by on a Saturday night. “El, come with me. I wanna show you something.”

I ran out of the house so fast to go with him that I barely heard Mom remind me that I needed to put away my laundry. Nice, huh? Hey, she always put my brothers’ laundry away, so I think I deserved one bye on the chore just that once.

On the way, we stopped to get root beer floats to go then Jag drove to a kind of lookout point.

“This is where I come when I need to think.”

“It’s beautiful up here,” I said in approval, feeling honored that he’d share this place with me since he said he’d never told anyone else about it.

We sat on the hood of his car leaning back against the windshield, looking out at the abundance of sparkling city lights, which was an awesome sight.

“What do you wanna do after graduating?” he asked, staring out at the twinkling skyline.

“Well, being the trainer for the football team has been fun, aside from all the stinky, sweaty guys, but it’s seriously made me consider going into sports medicine,” I informed him.

He chuckled. “That’s cool. I think you’d be great in that field.”

I smiled. “Thanks. What about you?” I asked looking over at him, still in awe that we were sitting there together after having been apart for so long.

He sighed. “When I was little I wanted to play in a band like my dad did.”

I knew this already because he’d said so when we were young and, man, he could play a guitar crazy good. So could his sister. He’d tried teaching me when we were younger but my fingers weren’t long enough to hit some of the chords, so I opted to just listening to him play.

“Then I thought about being a professional skateboarder.” I smacked his arm knowing he was being a dork. “Hey! When I got my kickflip down, I thought I was gonna be the next Tony Hawk!”

“Whatever.” I chuckled.

“Then being a gigolo crossed my mind.”

I almost did a spit take with my float as my hand came up to cover my mouth. I looked at him and rolled my eyes exaggeratedly. “Well, I’m sure you’d never go broke.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me as he grinned. “You think? Wow, El, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were saying I’m hot.”

Of course, he was hot! And, of course, my face turned every shade of red imaginable, which made him grin even more.

He leaned into me, knocking my shoulder playfully with his. “No, but it’s been insane with all these coaches looking at me from all these colleges. There’ve even been some pro scouts that have come out.”

I knew he was good, but hadn’t realized he was that good. Dang.

“So go pro,” I said with a shrug.

He laughed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“You’re good, Jag. That’s why it’d
be
easy.” He dragged a hand over his face looking a little worried. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s just that it’s a lot of pressure. If I go pro right out of high school, I have a better chance of going to the majors. But my parents want me to get a degree.” He frowned. “After three years, I can go pro, but the odds of being drafted go way down.” He looked scared and uncertain just then, something I’d never seen him be. Jag was always confident, it seemed.

I boldly took his hand in mine, lacing our fingers together, trying to reassure him as he’d done for me once. “You’re good, Jag. I’ll bet you could go pro any time you wanted.” I knocked my shoulder back into his. “It’s your destiny to be awesome. C’mon, with a name like Jagger Knox Jensen, you’re going places.”

He snorted at that, still looking a little doubtful.

I tried taking his mind off of his worries. “Look at it this way. One day when I’m a physical therapist or whatever, I’ll get to take care of your rickety, old body when your arm wears out from striking out everyone.”

“You wanna take care of my body, huh?” he asked, squeezing my hand, looking over at me with a wicked gleam in his eyes, which totally left me flabbergasted.

“I, uh, well, I… yeah,” I stammered then grimaced, not knowing what else to say. I bowed my head, embarrassed as could be, stirring the straw around in what was left of my float. When I looked up at him, a gasp left me at the sexier than hell look he sported, his half grin in full effect while he watched me, and all I could do was sit there and be stupefied. Heavy on the stup. At that crooked grin on his face, a shiver ran through me, which I’m sure he noticed, since his damned grin got even bigger. 

“So fucking cute,” he mumbled while shaking his head then he gave me a genuine smile and winked at me.

Now, I’d read a lot of romance books, some I was sure that if Mom knew about they would’ve sent her on a cleaning frenzy for days trying to keep her mind off what her only daughter had been mentally digesting, but I never knew that what was written in those books was freaking real. At Jag’s wink, my insides did a flip-flop, my heart was pounding in my chest and I was so heated that I was tempted to pour the remainder of my float over my head to cool off.

All this from a wink and a smile. Jeez.

After that night, I finally got my bearings and decided to stop being an amateur. Jag was getting a kick out of keeping me off balance with his flirtatiousness. Well, two could play that game, right? It wasn’t like I’d never flirted before.

A few days later, we sat in a booth at our little burger place, drinking root beer floats again. And here went nothing. While we were talking, I raised an eyebrow at him then picked up my glass to take a drink, planning to get some foam on my lip again then provocatively swipe my tongue over it to put Mr. Hot Stuff in his place. Good intentions and all that, right? So just as I tipped the glass, a huge glob of ice cream slammed into my lips causing me to gasp as the drink went into my mouth.

So… if choking’s considered sexy, I nailed that bitch.

But, sadly, it’s not, so there I sat, coughing my lungs up, sounding like a damned seal on steroids. The next thing I knew, Jag had gotten up coming to sit next to me then proceeded to pound me on the back with the force of a jackhammer asking if I was okay. Ugh. So much for my being the next Bond girl with all the sex appeal I exuded. I finally got over my fit, Jag went back to his seat, and we finished our floats amidst friendly chatter. Thank God he hadn’t realized what I’d been trying to do. That seduction shit was hard!

Now, while hanging out with Jag was all well and good, I couldn’t help wondering why he wanted to spend time with me. God knew I’d crushed on him forever, so could it have been that my feelings were being reciprocated? I mean, who spends that much time with someone if there’s not an eensy-weensy bit of interest, right? He’d remained flirty but hadn’t tried anything with me, so I wasn’t sure what the deal was. Maybe he just missed the comfort of our friendship. I decided not to question it and just go with the flow. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, yeah?

“Watch the ball, El!” Jag was pitching to me and I was batting. Oh, boy. We were at the high school field a couple weeks later on a Saturday when no one was there, just messing around and he was trying to show me some of the ins and outs of America’s favorite pastime. “Keep your eye on it then swing!” He did his wind up and sent a pitch my way.

“Ahhh! Why can’t I hit it?” I shrieked, after I’d swung and missed. Again. For like the twentieth time. I stomped my foot like a spoiled brat. He was taking it way easy on me by throwing me tosses that a ten-year-old boy could hit, yet I couldn’t. Damn it.